Interestingly, on Monday June 27, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps began a 10-day major missile war game, code named Great Prophet 6. During the war game, the domestically manufactured short-range, medium-range, and long-range missiles, consisting of the Qiam, Shahab, and Sejil missiles, will be test-fired. The latest military achievements by the IRGC will be unveiled — which includes underground missile silos that were revealed for the first time on Monday.

Iranian state TV footage showed deep underground missile silos, including images of missiles being fired from one silo after a large metal roof opened to facilitate the launch. They claim that the Iranian missiles stored in them are now ready to hit targets should there be any threat or aggression by the enemy. A Guards’ officer further claimed that Iran has “numerous” underground missile silos, which satellites can’t detect. Other officers from the Guards stated that only a few countries in the world possess the technology to construct underground missile silos. The technology required for that is as complicated as building the missile itself. The missiles in these silos are permanently mounted in the vertical position and ready to be launched on a moment’s notice, making it much harder for the U.S. or its allies to detect and destroy the site before the launch.

The West ignores or seems to not understand the danger that the radicals in Iran pose to the stability and security of the world. Soon those missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads, and this will be checkmate.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the author of the award winning book, A Time to Betray. He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

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1.
NWBill

This would be a prime moment for an American President to engage in power politics by handling this situation in the following way: announce to the world that the Syrian citizens who are rebelling for greater rights and freedoms enjoys the support of the American government and people; and America views Syrian civilian deaths, especially those carried out as murders of defenceless citizens, with extreme alarm … and a direct threat to peace in the region.

Second, the United States would assist its’ ally Turkey in its’ support and handling of Syrian refugees with materiel, medical support, and financial aid … and seek ways to find new homes for those displaced persons who do not want to return to Syria until the present crisis is over.

Third, The US would reinforce the Sixth Fleet in the Med with an additional CBG, and order the onsite battle group commanders to use any and all means to protect the peoples of the Middle East against ANY missile launches originating in Iran – including Turkey, which is a NATO ally. Additional US Navy forces would be deployed to the strait of Hormuz, located near the territorial waters of Kuwait. Also, the US would install, with the permission of the Iraqi government, mobile anti-ballistic missile defenses on Iraqi territory, manned by both US and NATO troops, for the protection of the region against ballistic missiles.

Fourth, the US would consider ANY sign of launches from Iranian territory or airspace as a clear and present threat to the region and its’ allies, and use any and all military means to protect the region and eliminate the threat of Iranian military moves against any of its’ neighbors.

Fifth, ANY attack on US, NATO, allied forces or territories, or merchant marine shipping, by any nation, would be considered an act of war, and would be severely dealt with by US forces – including troops still in Iraqi territory.

Sixth, the President would announce that the US would not act in Syrian affairs unless Iran did. The internal conflict needs to be resolved by the Syrian people – and any act of interference by Iran or any other neighbour country would be dealt with.

Essentially, this policy would be designed to drive a wedge between the two centers of terrorism in the Middle East; Iran, and Syria. With the backing of the US military, this policy would isolate Syria, and Assad would find it that much harder to hold onto power. Also, Iranian influence and support would be cut off at the neck, splitting the two and isolating them from one another. That would make it easier to deal with their terrorist actions, and hopefully remove Syria as a terrorist partner from Iran – especially if Assad can be overthrown by his own people.

The Iranians would think long and hard before challenging the US military with over 100,000 troops near their borders, and a minimum of three CBGs in the area. Unmanned drones would patrol those borders, and the whole area would be carefully watched for any signs of activity. This would also relieve the pressure on Israel in its’ defense against terrorist attacks originating in Syria and Lebanon (the second carrier group would be in the waters between Syria and Crete).

Obama would never do this, of course. It takes a leader with guts and strategic vision – which leaves out any Democratic President or Congress.

NWBill,
Sounds expensive. How about we just give Iran 48 hours notice to unconditionally surrender, hand over their Supreme Leaders (Including Muqtada Al Sadr) and Ahmadinejad, or we bomb all their military and refining facilities to smithereens? And then do it. Of course NObama nor any Democrat would do that either.

Your American civilization is vanishing due to its injustice. Obama doesn’t have the vision, and who had it, George Bush who was the cause of the world economy crisis? Things are not like before anymore, Nato and US know that attacking Iran would mean the west economy to crush down, as Iran will destroy all oil ships and close their routes forever. It’s easy to start a war, it’s never easy to stop it. US thought attacking Iraq and Afghanistan would be like a pic nic, but look at the consequences….Getting involved in the middle east means a destruction for any western country who dares to do so. The middle east is a place where all prophets were born…it’s a sacred region, and whoever goes to that region with evil intentions looses.

Turkey is a member in good standing of NATO. Under Art 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on Turkey is an attack on NATO. This is the article that justified NATO members rallying round the USA after the 9/11 attacks and led to the occupation of Afghanistan. Someone should just point this out to Persia.

This makes no sense. Up until a few months ago, Iran was trying to be best friends with Turkey, especially since Turkey is now turning more and more against the United States and is embracing a more radical form of Islam. To threaten Turkey over this would waste all those months, perhaps years, that Iran has invested in building an alliance with Turkey. So now they’re going to flush all that down the toilet for Assad? I’m not sure I believe all of that. Turkey is still a member of NATO and the Iranians must understand that any attack against it would be an attack against all of NATO. Even in its weakened state, NATO still has nuclear missiles of its own (Britain, France, and the United States) and would retaliate in kind if Iran tried anything as stupid as firing off some nuclear missiles (assuming they had any) at Turkey. Something strange is going on here, and it may represent some sort of turmoil or power struggle that’s taking place within the Iranian government.

I was thinking the same thing – although it makes sense that nothing, including freindly relations with Turkey, is more important to them than keeping their terrorists bases in Syria.

Or, the Iranians just couldn’t wait to try out nuclear intimidation and blackmail. Turkey was just the first of many to be threatened with nukes.

As far as threats go, it’s a weak one. Unlike most of NATO, Turkey has not been neglecting their military. A war between Iran and Turkey/Nato would be short and very one-sided. Leopard 2A4′s against T-72′s – obsolete Chinese aircraft against F-16′s. Sounds like a rerun.

Iran has an airforce which its built by itself. It manufactures its own aircraft. It also has some of the finest anti-tank missiles in the world, going from copying Soviet ones to designing and manufacturing their own. It won’t be as easy as you want to portray.

Iran’s air force is mostly obsolete junk. The 100+ F-5s sounds impressive, but the F-5 can’t even carry a full load of fuel and weapons. It’s just a speedy trainer. Other more potent machinery like the Mig-29 and F-14 are totally obsolete buckets that belong in the scrap-yard. The Iranian government aircraft factories make a rag-tag collection of ultralight helicopters and clones. As a whole, the Iranian air force is impressive for a 3rd world country, but the entire lot could be despatched by a single F-22 in a week or two.

It does make sense when you take into account two things. One is what Erdogan is doing about Syria. Syria is Iran’s only actual ally in the region, but that holds only as long as Assad Jr. remains in power. Erdogan is hosting Syrian refugees, offering mediation, quietly cooperating with Israel on the security problem Syria now presents, and making noises like Turkey is perfectly willing to help midwife a Syrian future without Iran’s boy Assad.

The other thing is Erdogan’s increasingly neo-Ottoman posture in the wake of his party’s election win. Iran and Turkey have been making common cause for several years now, but they have very different visions of the region’s future and which one will assume the lead. For the radical Islamists among them, the question is which one will be the seat of the caliphate. They can’t both organize the caliphate; one has to win out.

Erdogan’s victory speech was remarkable for its allusions to the former Ottoman caliphate (I wrote about it at my blog), and in it, he specifically mentioned Damascus as a capital that benefited as much from his electoral win as the Turks themselves. Yanks tend not to recognize these allusions, but Iran certainly did. Erdogan conceives of himself, for the moment, as the voice of the Islamic East to the West, and he rhetorically took under his wing the old territories of the Ottoman Empire, from Jerusalem and Damascus to Cairo, Beirut, Skopje (Macedonia), and Sarajevo in Bosnia. He might as well have given himself the Ottoman sultan’s title “Allah’s Shadow on Earth.”

One thing the mullahs in Qom and Tehran know: the Mahdi isn’t coming back to rule the earth from Turkey.

The opposition in Syria are Sunni – in some cases Brotherhood affiliated Sunni (like the late lamented martyrs of the Gaza flotilla) – and they constitute a decent majority. Assad’s crack down has been astonishingly brutal and has resulted in large numbers of refugees on Turkish soil. On the one hand, Turkey is looking around the ME right now saying how come this brutal alawite dictator is being allowed to slaughter his Sunni citizenry? Why can’t he being ushered out the door like the rest of the Arab Spring dictators? On the other hand, Assad’s regime in Damascus is absolutely critical to the larger strategy of revolutionary Iran. Iran as shia-islamic nuclear hegemon and defender of the faithful against the zionist entity doesn’t really work without the Iranian, Assad/Syrian, Lebanon/hezbollah crescent. Iran sees US/NATO intervening in Libya and facilitating the removal of various dictators and realises that it must be a great temptation to Turkey to help its NATO allies to do the same thing in Syria. Hence the friendly “warning” from the revolutionary guard.

Omar, you are spot on. I would add that some very effective, quick and quiet aid to the Lebanese foes of Hezbollah would do wonders for the anti Assad factions. Couple that with an increase of activity on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the same on the Jordanian-Syrian border and we could achieve a checkmate on Assad and the Qom mullahs. Full out onslaught done quietly.

Omar, you are spot on. I would add that some very effective, quick and quiet aid to the Lebanese foes of Hezbollah would do wonders for the anti Assad factions. Couple that with an increase of activity on the Iraqi-Syrian border, the same on the Jordanian-Syrian border and we could achieve a checkmate on Assad and the Qom mullahs. Full out onslaught done quietly.
Sorry for the repost!
I forgot to mention the unmentionables in this equation; the Kurds and the minority Christians throughout the region. The Kurds scare all of them, Turks, Persians and Syrians. They deserve their own homeland while the Christians and subsequently the Jews of the area should not be denied their chance to strengthen thier positions during this time. The Arab Spring seems to be an existential threat to the Christian and Jewish communities throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Tolerence requires strength for these endangered people. B’hai anyone?

The Alawites have been retconned into Shiites by some high level legedermain. They are really a completely divergent sect like the Druze, Baha’i, or Ahmadi. However in order for them to “rule” the “Muslim” land of Syria, they had to become “standard” Muslims of some sort, so a fatwa was cooked up making them Shiites.

What is not regularly mentioned is that the Alawites are divided betwen Syria and Turkey. Further, a significant portion of that population was transferred to Turkey by the French just before WW II, something the advocates of a “Greater Syria” have never particularly liked.

So what happens now if Turks with Ottoman aspirations intervene in Syria to help Sunnis displace the Alawites as rulers?
Would they produce a fatwa declaring the Alawites heretics to help displace them?
Where will that leave the Iranians and their proxies in Lebanon?
And of course on a strategic level, for the moment, whither goes Syria, there follows Iraq, as whoever pulls the strings in one has a free pass to the other.

“Islamic Unity” is pretty much like the Immortals in Highlander – in the end, there can be only one. Erdogan and Khameini cannot both be Caliph.

A war with Iran is coming. It will not happen under our current President, but the Iranians will keep pushing, seeing the weakness of the Obama administration, until a military response is unavoidable.
Whether by this President’s incompetence or intent, we have lost a great opportunity to separate Syria and Iran. We also lost the opportunity, in Iran, to aid the resistance, and potentially assist in the downfall of the mullahs.

This is the middle east the west wants to ignore. Message to OBAMA and all his ilks. The problem in the middle east is not ISRAEL, the problem is the division/hate/rivalry within Islam itself. Sooner or latter ME will explode and when it does be prepared for a fireworks beyond the region.

Islam is 40% about muslims, 60% about non-muslims. As Islamic doctrine itself tells us that there is no religious relationship whatsoever between muslims and non-muslims, by definition, that 60% is therefore political. The muslims all agree on the 60% that is about non-muslims – the politics of handling the kafirs. The argument they are having is who should be in charge of implementing that 60%. The Saudis, Iranians and Turks all have their own ideas about who should be running the ongoing jihad against the west. So they are jockeying for position. They’re falling over each other to be in the driver’s seat to enslave us to Islam.

Look at the western clowns: Obama,Cameron,Sarcozi,Berlusconi and Nato gen-sec! They are incapable to act properly at any provocations and they`l have them more and more.Some contradictions in Iran`s policy? Ha! Dictators love them: they add some mistery to their policy.

“The West ignores or seems to not understand the danger…” No, it is not the West. It is the ignorant and blind governments of the west, led by the chosen one. There are enough people who realize the danger, but we can’t get this through their immensely thick skulls into their pea brains.

Ah just put obama on top of one of our missiles firmly planted in his annal. Then fire it at an Iranian nuke site, obama has to put his nose into everything so give him the best seat in the house. When are you PC people going to realize you can not talk to disturber-ed people. Some times a man has to do what a man has to do! Just let me know when your ready with obama on the missile, because that would be a Kodak moment!

Iran is the only strong country in the middle east that is opposed to the US.Look what happened when Iran wasnt strong: US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and stole their resources,destroyed their armies while brainwashing the US people that they are helping those nations.To have world peace we should maintien balance.Separating Iran from Syria would hurt Hezbollah too and israel will start invading lebanon.Thats why i support Iran and Syria,not for their islamic shit or retarded ways but bcz its a way to make peace and stop the US abuse.(P.S: The Syrian revolutionist are mainly extremist sunna,it wont benefit the world much if they rule syria)